Six favourite Lithuanian beers

After the blog posts about my Lithuanian beer
tour Bryan D. Roth invited me to do a post
for The
Six-pack Project. The idea is to get different bloggers to pick
six beers from some country to present what that beer culture has to
offer. Having written a lot about different Lithuanian breweries and
styles in general, but little about the specific beers, I decided this
might be a good way to give a more direct idea of what Lithuanian beer
is like.

This isn't necessarily the top six in order one to six, since I've
let my pick be influenced by factors like importance, availability,
and variety. I've also left out all beers that are not in some sense
Lithuanian in origin, so while Dundulis Ledzukas is an absolutely
stellar Czech-style pilsener, it is not in this list.

Jovaru Alus

Jovaru Alus

The classic among Lithuanian farmhouse ales, and the house beer at
the famous Šnekutis bar in
Vilnius. Also the beer that sparked a sensation
when the yeast was DNA sequenced, and rightly
so, because it really is a unique and very good beer. The best place
to taste it is at the brewery, because being unboiled, unpasteurized,
and unfiltered, it is not very stable. However, even at Šnekutis
it's still very, very good.

The beer is hazy amber, around 6%, with a small white head. The
dominant flavour is mealy, herbal walnut oil, with peppery floral
notes. It feels sweetish and full-bodied, but analysis shows it has
barely any sugar at all, thanks to the yeast. Probably much of the
body comes from the wort not being boiled, which will leave much
higher levels of protein in the beer than what's usual.

Despite being decidedly odd and very unlike other beers, I've found
it harmonic and highly drinkable. Some people find it hard going,
however. Should you find yourself among that unfortunate minority,
consider
Tim
Webb's Ratebeer rating: "I have no idea what this but it is to be
respected. Take a glass of Orval, oud lambiek and sahti alongside it
and you will start to get it."

Piniavos Seklyčios

Another Piniavos beer

This beer has been around for many years, but was fairly rare until
recently, so not many people have tried it, which is a shame. It's
really a textbook example of how elegant and drinkable traditional
beers can be, despite their reputation for being rough and edgy.

A clean, fresh, delicious kaimiškas that's relatively clear and
deep yellow, at 5.8%. It's kind of subtle, with a musty earth cellar
base on top of which sits rich fruit, dusty straw, and hoppy resin in
a very harmonic combination. In the mouth it's soft, smooth and just
slides down. It's really a thirst-quencher and a beer one could easily
drink by the bucket.

Note that the best place to have this beer is Prie Uosio in
Panevėžys. It's not likely to be as good in Vilnius, but do
not pass over it even so.

Vasaknu Dvaro Tamsus

Sorry. Taking a picture of this beer is not easy.

Unlike the previous two beers, this is a beer produced using
equipment that looks exactly like that of any modern craft brewery,
and with ingredients that do not stand out in any way (except for the
Lithuanian malts). But the resulting beer (5.8%) very much stands out,
and is recognizably Lithuanian while being at the same time very
distinctive.

The beer is a hazy dark reddish brown, with a earthy fruity herbal
aroma that has traces of syrup in it. In the mouth it is surprisingly
light, almost fluffy, soft and smooth. It slips down so smoothly it's
almost too easy to drink. The sweetish herbal licorice and raisins
flavour doesn't hurt, either. At the end, caramel and fruit linger in
the mouth for a while.

It's a very good beer, but again a caution is in order. I'm told
Vasaknu Dvaro recently had a new brewer, and he's changed the recipe
into the beer I described here. But the recipe could change again,
obviously.

Senojo Vilniaus Tamsusis su Prieskoniais

Another beer in the same series

This beer is included precisely because it is not a
traditional beer, but rather an unusual and unusually successful
modern beer that's different from most of what's made elsewhere in the
world. It's part of Vilniaus Alus's Senojo Vilniaus (that is, Old
Vilnius) series, and the name means "dark with spices". Note that it's
unusually strong, at 8.2%.

And spicy it certainly is. It looks like any filtered tamsusis, but
the aroma of ginger, raisins, and cinnamon, with touches of alcohol
and honey, makes it clear it's different. The spices combine really
well, but don't completely hide the alcohol, which heats up the soft
mouthfeel a bit. It's sweet, but also a bit astringent, probably from
the spice.

The flavour is an odd combination of cinnamon, lavender, ginger,
and cardamom, and what's perhaps most remarkable is how well the
combination works. It's rare for powerfully spiced beers to be truly
harmonic, but somehow this one is. It seems to really divide drinkers,
who either love it or hate it.

Ramūno Čižo Gira

A different kvass

In some ways Ramūno Čižo Keptinis should really be
one of the stars on this list, but I've written so
much about it already that I decided to pass over it in favour of
his other beer. Note, however, that leaving Lithuania without tasting
the keptinis is a very, very bad idea. Whether you'll be able to taste
this kvass is not certain, but it's been included anyway, to show you
what kvass can be.

It's hazy brown without any head, like most kvass. Surprisingly, it
smells almost exactly like home-made bread dough. It's made with bread
yeast, which may have contributed to that. The taste is light, fresh
sweet bread and yeast, with traces of rye and raisins. It's very, very
drinkable, which for once is no problem, as kvass has very little
alcohol. That something so lovely could be produced simply with bread
and yeast is a bit of a surprise.

Kvass is a beer style that's received very little attention,
despite being drunk by hundreds of millions of people over half of
Europe. If you get the chance, make sure to try some, and this one is
the best (at least of the ones I've tried).

Kupiškio Salaus Alus

Salaus alus

This pale, unfiltered beer at 5% was my first real Lithuanian beer,
and even though it was now three years ago I can still remember that
first sip. I'd flown into Vilnius knowing little more than that
traditional homebrew existed in Lithuania, and could be bought in
specialist bars in Vilnius. I went into Bambalynė and asked the
friendly waitress for a recommendation, and she picked this beer.

The label was kind of classy, and in the glass it was pale and hazy
with a normal white head. But the aroma! It was as if someone had left
a big bale of hay to bake in the sun all day, then dropped me from a
crane face-first into the hay. The intense, dusty, dry strawy flavour
was followed by peppery oily fruit notes. I knew at once that I was
onto something big.

By coincidence, another blogger independently found it in Poland at
the same time, and was deeply impressed. The blog post is now gone,
but his Ratebeer rating says things like "What citrus rind, what
craziness! Wow. The flavor is just a joyride of the senses! Intense
waves of bitterness, with HUGE giant straw/grassiness, effervescent
peach skin/white grape skin is clear. So astringent and so good."

On subsequent visits to Lithuania I've made a point of each time
buying a bottle again, hoping to be able to share it with friends in
Norway, but it has always been sour and infected. I even tried it
draft in Panevėžys, but found it out of sorts there, too,
although not sour.

I included it in this section even so to make a point: these beers
are inconsistent and
unstable. Martin
Thibault called them "changelings", to describe how they seem
never to appear the same to any two people, or even to the same person
twice. So beware!